Vernon Ah Kee and Bruce Maclean

In Conversation

18 June 2015

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Ah Kee’s conceptual text pieces, videos, photographs and drawings form a critique of Australian culture from the perspective of the Aboriginal experience of contemporary life. He represented Australia in Once Removed at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Recent exhibitions include Ideas of Barack, 2011, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Tall Man at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne in 2011, the Indigenous Triennale National Gallery of Australia and Everything Falls Apart at Artspace in 2012. In 2013, Ah Kee exhibited in Sakahan at the National Gallery of Canada, and 2014, he was awarded the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, as well as being announced as a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow. In 2015, Ah Kee will exhibit a new body of work at the Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.

McLean is a member of the Wierdi people of the Birri Gubba Nation of Wribpid, Central Queensland. He has curated exhibitions for QAGOMA including, and has been a part of the curatorial team for the Asia Pacific Triennial and Contemporary Australia series. McLean is co-curator of the upcoming exhibition GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art.

Principal Funders

The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia.